Round And Round And Square By Fredun Shapur

Fredun Shapur's illustration and design work is as awesome as his name, and it baffles me how little information about it exists on the web. Shapur did toys and graphics for Creative Playthings, including an iconic series of posters and illustrations in the 1970s. [Hmm, not quite sure what's going on in that center right one...]

But it's easy to imagine how Creative Playthings' bold geometric figures evolved from, say, the simpler shapes of Shapur's 1965 children's book, Round and Round and Square. Which is itself a kind of 60's Hard Edge variation of the abstract anthropomorphism Leo Lionni used in his 1957 torn shape classic, Little Blue and Little Yellow. [Do I have to do all this myself, art historians?]

Anyway, it's good to see at least some online interest picking up in Shapur's work. The beautiful scans of Round and Round and Square are from Canadian artist Michael Dumontier's fresh & awesome blog, Stopping Off Place, which I look forward to stealing many more post ideas from in the near future.

update: d'oh, daddy may type, but that doesn't mean he types well. the link works fine, but as the commenters pointed out, Michael's blog is actually Stopping Off Place, not Stopping Off Point. Michael's emailed me a couple of times since I posted this, but, being Canadian, he's too polite to point out my mistake.]

okay, i found it.
it really is amazing...
and it is called stopping off place, not point.
will you please stop confusing me with misinformation?
do you want to keep that good stuff all to yourself, maybe..?

oh oh .. thank you for the "stopping off place" link.. I was wondering about the content of this book prior to getting it... I wish I will be able to find the original creative playthings posters one day...

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